


Aftermath

by JANJANBERRY



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Coping, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Post-Project Freelancer, Project Freelancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-22 13:41:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JANJANBERRY/pseuds/JANJANBERRY
Summary: A collection of short works showing what a handful of freelancers did after the crashing of the Mother of Invention and how they dealt with what the director had done to them. Each chapter follows a different person and their way of coping with the painful end of project freelancer.





	1. York

**Author's Note:**

> i love filling in those gaps in canon and putting my faves through the wringer

York’s helmet sat on the bar table next to his head. He hadn’t slept since he and Tex had taken down the Mother of Invention. He stared at the lighter in his hand, flicking it open and shut. It was all he had left of her now. A lighter tied to a memory of the first and most likely last time he would fall in love.   
He could still smell the perfume she wore that night they met. He could hear her laugh, see her gorgeous green eyes, and most of all he could remember that feeling of knowing he’d found her. All his life he was sure he would never want to fall in love and settle down, and she changed all that. He wanted to marry her after the war and find a nice little house where they could have kids and grow old together. That fantasy was impossible now.   
The bartender interrupted his thoughts by placing a glass of water between him and the lighter, breaking his almost obsessive focus. “Drink this. All you’ve had for the past two days is scotch and I don’t need the UNSC on my ass about a dead soldier in my bar.” He grumbled.   
York probably wouldn’t have taken it if Delta wasn’t nagging him to do anything other than wallow and drink. He put the lighter away and sipped at the water. “Thanks.” He’d come to this space station to hide from the UNSC, so maybe alcohol poisoning was a bad idea.   
“So what’s the big deal with that lighter?” The bartender asked while wiping down the counter.   
“It belonged to someone special.” The usual humor in his voice was gone now, replaced with a terrible hollowness.   
“I take it that person’s gone now.” Now he somewhat understood. “I’m sorry, buddy, that must be rough.”   
“It’s my own damn fault.” He stared down at the glass. “I thought I could save her, but I failed.”   
“That’s… damn.” He didn’t even know what to say. “Guess that explains the drinking.”  
He nodded.   
The bartender sighed. “Alright, I’m making you something to eat. On the house. What do you want?”   
“It’s fine, I don’t-” A little green flash appeared next to his head.  
“Agent York will have a cheeseburger with extra fries.” Delta told the bartender.   
“What the hell is that!?” The bartender jumped.   
York just sighed. “That’s Delta. He’s just worried about me.”  
“You have not eaten in four days, six hours, and seventeen minutes. You will accept this generous offer.” Delta insisted.   
The bartender shrugged. “One cheeseburger coming right up.” He punched in the order and headed to the kitchen.   
York shook his head. “Delta, you don’t have to keep worrying about me.”  
“You are punishing yourself for Carolina’s death, you need to-”  
“Delta!” The hologram disappeared as he put his head in his hands. He hated this. He hated the guilt that he couldn’t escape no matter how much he tried to drown it. He hated that every time he closed his eyes everything replayed. His mind was stuck on it like a record skipping back to the same exact spot in a song every few seconds. Carolina was dead, North and South left, Wash was taken away, Maine went crazy, Tex ran away, and he was alone with Delta.   
After a few seconds of silence he sighed. “I’m sorry I yelled, D. You can come back out if you want.” The hologram appeared next to him.   
“I am only looking out for your wellbeing.”   
“I know. I appreciate it. I’m just… I lost a lot. Right now you’re all I’ve got. I read the files Tex gave us, I know you were supposed to be part of some psychological warfare the director had going on, but we need to be a team. We were both being used, and now we have to have each other’s backs until we figure out what we’re doing.” He sipped the water again.   
Delta considered his words for a few moments. “Yes. The director betrayed both of us, as well as the other agents and their AIs. We must work together. It is the only logical path.”   
York managed a bit a a smile. “Glad you’re on my side, D.”  
“Your left side, specifically.”  
“Was that a joke?”   
“Yes. Research indicates that humor can be used to make humans feel better.”  
“You know what? It makes me feel a little better.”


	2. North and South

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you like my stuff, you can support me on ko-fi where i'm also JANJANBERRY. link is in my author bio.

“It’s okay. We’re going to be fine.” North mumbled. South just rolled her eyes. They were staying on a ship they’d stolen to escape the wreckage.   
“Can you quit the fucking optimism? I’m sick of you chanting it’s okay like it’ll somehow fix all this shit.” She crossed her arms. “We’re war criminals. It’s not okay.”   
“Maybe it’s not okay right now, but it w-”  
“Shut the fuck up, Derek.”   
Hearing his actual name kind of stunned him. Everyone had been calling him North for so long it almost felt wrong being called his given name again. “South-”  
“That’s not my fucking name.”   
“Alex, we need to stay positive, maybe the UNSC can help us.”  
“The UNSC wants our heads on a platter. They want all traces of project freelancer erased from history, and that includes us. Thinking positive right now isn’t going to help us survive.” Most people thought South was irrational, it was part of why the director disliked her, but when it came down to it she knew how to stay alive. “We’re going to claw our way into a hiding place and kill anyone who tries to stop us. Nothing is going to fix itself while we sit around a hope everything turns out alright, so we’re gonna play dirty until this all settles down.”  
North thought for a minute. “We shouldn’t pick a single hiding place, we should keep moving so we can’t be tracked down.”   
“That’s a great idea actually. If we’re holed up we’re sitting ducks.”  
“So we become nomads wandering planet to planet and picking up work where we can.”   
“Perfect, and no more dickhead director trying to pry us apart with those AIs since they took Theta out of your head.”   
North looked away. “About that…”  
“What?”  
“I still have Theta.”  
“You son of a bitch. I thought they took all of the AIs out after they fucked up Wash.”   
“They didn’t. I just told him that to make him feel better.”   
“You lying sack of shit.”   
A little purple hologram appeared next to North’s head. “I’m sorry, South. North really didn’t want you to be mad at me.”  
She dragged a hand down her face. “Great. So now we’re dragging bait for Maine with us.”  
North crossed his arms. “Theta is important to me, South. I have to protect him.”  
“That’s what the director told you to do so you’d focus more on that thing than your own sister.” Now the arguing was starting up again.   
“I thought you hated when I tried to take care of you. You always made it seem like I was embarrassing you or trying to belittle you.”   
“Yeah, it sucked until suddenly you stopped caring about me.”   
“Are you jealous of Theta?”   
“No! I’m not jealous of that thing.”   
He sighed. “Okay, maybe I did start paying more attention to Theta and the leaderboard than I did to you, but now all we have is each other. We’re going to take care of each other. You keep me grounded in reality, I keep you from getting in trouble, just like when we were kids. And Theta can run the bubble shield so I can keep us safe.”   
She looked away. “Whatever. I’m only sticking with you because you’re my brother.”   
“That’s the little sister I know and love.”   
“Shut up you’re only five minutes older than me.”  
“Five and a half, actually.”   
“Those five minutes made you a prick.”  
He laughed. “No, those five minutes made me more mature.”   
Theta butted in. “Do you think we’ll run into my brothers while we’re travelling?”   
“Maybe. It depends on if we ever find York and Delta again. I wonder how he’s handling all this.” North replied.  
“Probably handling it with a bottle of scotch.” South retorted.   
“I wish you were wrong.” He sighed. “Maybe-”  
She cut him off. “No. We’re not going to find him. I don’t want anything to do with any of this freelancer bullshit anymore.”   
He was disappointed to say the least, but he understood. “Maybe when all of this blows over we’ll have a few drinks together. I’m sure we’ll run into each other eventually.”   
South rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. Let’s just get to a space station so we can sell this ship and get a faster one.”


	3. Carolina

The cold snow was almost enough to numb the terrible pain Carolina was in. She had woken up buried in the soft powder snow, no idea which way was up. She was sure her exposed face was frostbitten, and the rest of her would be next if she didn’t get out of this pit soon. She stuck her hand toward her face to try brushing the snow away so maybe she could see a bit. Once she had a bit of visual she spit - as gross as it was - using gravity to determine which way she had to dig to get up. She was on her left side apparently, so she started wriggling towards the surface, turning and digging up through about three feet of snow.   
Once her head was as the surface she looked around. There was wreckage sticking out of the snow at the base of the cliff. It all came back to her at once. The fight with York, the fight with Tex, the crash, Maine, the look of disdain in her father’s eyes, and then falling. The deep snow whas the only reason she had survived. She managed to get her upper body out of the snow and twisted around a bit more until she spotted her helmet a few feet away. She leaned, trying to get to it while fighting sinking into the snow. After a few minutes she reached it and pulled it on the protect her face from the cold.   
It took her hours to struggle out of the deep snow towards a piece of wreckage she could sit on to rest. She was freezing, and if she was still outside when night fell she would almost certainly die. She took a moment on the roughly table sized to assess what she had and try to make a plan. She set out her pistol, a combat knife, one emergency protein bar North made everyone carry, an extra clip of ammo, a small grappling hook gun, and a very small flask of water that was probably frozen. She almost tried her radio, but if Maine knew she was alive he would surely come to finish the job.   
She sighed and stared at her pistol. It was a one way ticket out of all of this. She almost reached for it, thinking again of her father and how he had just watched as Maine ripped Eta and Iota out of her head and threw her away like a ragdoll.   
But it was that same thought that made her forget the whole idea. She had to survive. She had to live for as long as it took to get off this icy hell and kill her father. No matter what it took, she would get her revenge for everything he’d put not just her, but every freelancer through. The director had to die. This alone would keep her going.   
The first thing she did was ball up some snow and stuck it in her mouth. As it melted she drank the water. This would be her only way to drink for a while. Next, she surveyed the area for anything she could use to make snowshoes. Scrap metal, branches, anything flat and light that she could tie to her feet. Eventually she spotted two smaller scraps from the ship wedged in the snow.   
It took her awhile to wade through the snow to get them and get back to a scrap she could sit on, but it was well worth it. They were wide enough and light enough to use. She held them to her feet and turned on the magnets in her boots to stick them to her feet, then tested them out on the snow. She didn’t sink in, though she did have to walk funny to get through the snow field.   
She wandered around, picking up supplies and warming up as she moved around. She gathered together a large piece of cloth that looked like it might have been part of a couch in the lounge, some miscellaneous scraps of paper, some wood from what was once a chair, and the top of a table that she used the rope from her grappling hook to make into a sled to carry everything she found. Night time crept ever closer as she picked her way through the remnants of the ship she once called home. She moved towards the cliff to find a crag or a cave when she could take shelter and start a fire while picking up some scrap metal that could be useful.  
She got lucky and found a cave big enough to sit and build a fire in that was about a foot above the surface of the snow. She stepped in and set everything up, remembering all of the survival training her father had drilled into her as a child and assembling her wood and paper.   
Now she just had to use her lighter to get it going. She reached into the compartment where she always kept the lighter York had given her when they first met, finding it empty.   
“What? Shit!” She remembered that had thrown it away when they fought in the elevator shaft. When she had given up the man who had actually tried to save her from herself and her father. Now when she needed him it was her own fault for throwing him and his lighter away.   
It started getting colder, so she took one of her bullets out of her gun and her combat knife, placing the bullet amongst the paper scraps and striking it so it would ignite her tinder. She tended the the fire as her mind wandered back the York. She had been so mad at him for leaving with Tex. She felt as if Tex had taken everything from her: her spot on the leaderboard, her preferential treatment as the top freelancer, her father’s attention and affection, and then finally she took York. She was too obsessed with who York left with that she didn’t bother considering why. Maybe if she had she would be in a better situation.   
The small fire kept her from freezing to death as she wrapped herself in the piece of cloth. Her mind kept her up with thoughts of revenge, but first she had to hide until Maine was no longer a threat. As long as the Meta was in control she would be in danger, so she would let the world think she had died in the snow while she waited for the right time to rise from the ashes.


	4. Tex

Tex wished she could get drunk. She wished she was human enough to get absolutely plastered to forget all the pain, but the closest thing she had was Omega turning all the hurt in her metal heart into rage. The only thing Omega couldn’t touch was the deep fear they both shared. The fear of the Meta.   
She had never been so scared in her life than when she was watching Maine rip the implants out of Carolina’s head. Someone who had once been so caring and protective now turned into a monster by ambition unhindered by morals. Ambition carved out of the Alpha and taken away to further the Director’s agenda.   
Another wave of pain hit. She couldn’t save the Alpha, she couldn’t save Carolina, she couldn’t save anyone. She was the best of the best, but somehow she came up short the one time it actually mattered.   
She was curled up in an ice cave, hiding from the authorities now swarming the wreckage. If they found her she would end up stuck in a lab with a team of military scientists trying to find out what made her tick or how to use her as a weapon the same way the director had when she was first created. She looked at her hands. At the perfect body the director had made for her. She hated it. It just represented the lies the director had told her and the unattainable standard to be exactly like the person he wanted her to be. She hated that face that felt so alien to her and yet it was inseparable from her identity.   
Identity. What did she know about identity? Ever since she’d read those files and watched that video she’d lost all sense of it. She couldn’t tell the difference between what was truly her or what was just programmed into her. Did she even have any agency at all? Or was everything about her prefabricated? She wanted to scream to the world that she was an individual, to tear her hair out just to show she could make her own choices and be her own person, but as far as she knew that was exactly what Allison would do.   
She took her helmet off and stared at her reflection in the ice. There was that face she hated. It looked just like the Allison she saw in the video, but her lips were a bit softer, her eyes a bit brighter, her skin a bit smoother. Allison was 5’3, Tex was 5’5. Allison was soft around the edges from carrying Carolina for nine months, while Tex was all fabricated muscle. Tex felt as if she was the version of Allison tinted rose by sweetened memories. A more perfect version. One that was stronger, more beautiful, and more indestructible. An Allison that would never die.   
Tex took that thought to heart, and decided that as long as she could help it, the thing that would separate her from the shadow she lived in was that she would refuse death. She drew her combat knife and looked at it before using it to carve a scar down the left side of her face. Her artificial nerves burned, but she needed this. She needed the satisfaction of destroying something perfect to dull the pain and fear. She gathered up her blonde hair in her hand and with all the rage Omega could muster, slashed through it, leaving her with choppy, uneven hair the dropped only to her chin.   
Staring at the bundle of hair in her hands, she couldn’t help but think of what she was leaving behind. She knew the director was clever enough not to let the Alpha fall into the UNSC’s hands. He would hide him somewhere across the galaxy where Tex would likely never find him, so she wouldn’t bother looking. Trying to save everyone just ruined everything, so now she was going to look out only for herself. Once night fell she would snag a ride off the planet and start working for the highest bidder, and once she was rich enough she would use all of her resources to track down and kill the director for everything he’d done.


	5. Wash

“Can you tell us your name, soldier?” The woman in a white coat asked Wash as he sat on the couch across from her. He wasn’t sure where he was, or even what occured to get him there. The last thing he remembered was a man in purple armor waking him up, but after that, everything was fuzzy.  
“I… I think my name is... “ He had to concentrate, trying to pull anything from what felt like static in his mind. “My name is Leonard Church?” He sounded uncertain. “No, that’s not right…”   
The woman wrote a few things down. “No, it isn’t. Do you remember your real name?”  
He furrowed his eyebrows. “I… don’t think I know. I’m sorry.”   
“It’s okay. The dog tags we found on you told us you’re called Agent Washington, does that sound right?”   
Wash’s eyes darted around the room. No windows, locked doors, and a stranger asking him too many questions. He didn’t know what the hell was going on or who he was, but he knew that he did not like this. “It sounds familiar.”   
“Okay, Agent Washington, how old are you?”   
He looked down at his hands, the dried blood under his nails catching his eye. “I’m... I’m 19.” Staring at them he felt strange, like this wasn’t his body.   
She wrote that down, then looked up at him. “Is something wrong?”  
“What happened to me?” He looked up at her. “What’s going on?”   
She looked a bit nervous now. “We’re not actually certain. The investigation is still ongoing, and we’d like to get some information.”   
“Where’s Allison?”   
The question hung in the air for a few seconds. “Who is Allison?”  
Wash looked puzzled. “I-I don’t know. I just know she’s important. Do you know what happened to her?”   
The woman just shook her head and took a few notes down.   
Wash had a sudden wave of anxiety. Who was Allison? Why was she so important? He tried to focus of this single thread of thought as his breathing got faster. Why couldn’t he remember anything clearly? Everything in his mind seemed to conflict. Agent Washington was dead, he died with Agent Texas, but he was Agent Washington and he was probably alive.   
“Is everything alright, Agent Washington?” The woman asked.  
“Where am I? You keep asking me all these questions that I don’t know the answer to but I still don’t know what the fuck is going on!” He stood, making the woman reach for her hip. He froze. “What are you grabbing?”  
“N-nothing! Just a habit.”  
Wash immediately felt like he was in danger. He had to defend himself from being betrayed again. Again? Had he been betrayed before? He couldn’t tell, but he knew she was reaching for a weapon. “You’re lying! This is a trap! The director sent you, didn’t he!” His eyes were wild with fear.   
“Agent Washington, please calm down, you’re starting to scare me.”  
“I’m scaring you? You were gonna pull a weapon on me! I don’t even know who I am and I’m so terrified of what’s going to happen to me!” He was shaking now. “Am I crazy?” Tears began welling up in his eyes, showing him as exactly what he was - a scared teenager who had suffered too much.   
“We’re only trying to help you, which means you need to cooperate.”  
“I don’t want your help! I wanna go home!” He was shaking all over. He brought his hand to his face and felt something wet on his cheek. Tears? He couldn’t feel himself crying. He couldn’t feel anything. His own body felt alien to him, or was it even his body? “Who are you!? Who am I!?” He shrieked, backing away. How could he trust this woman when he didn’t even trust himself?   
She pressed a button on her side table and a few people in white came in. Wash screamed and backed into the wall, trying to fight them off until he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. The world very suddenly slowed down, and he was stuck just watching it go by through his eyes. He was placed on a gurney and wheeled into a blank room lit only by flickering fluorescent lights. They moved his body onto the bed and put something around his wrists to keep him there. It all felt like watching a movie since whatever they’d given him only seemed to make the disconnect between his shattered mind and his body worse. He was left to just stare at the ceiling until he lost consciousness.


End file.
